Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy

"From master storyteller and National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor comes a sweeping and gorgeously written modern fantasy series about a forbidden love, an ancient and epic battle, and hope for a world remade."

Ordinarily, I would review each book separately, but this time I felt it would best to handle the trilogy as one. Why? Well, because it's really one story.

I originally picked Daughter of Smoke and Bone up for a book club. I couldn't get into it, so at 8% I gave up and started reading something more interesting. It was a requirement for my MFA this year, so I started re-reading. I didn't get interested until about 25% in. I originally assumed this was because it wasn't a romance, but I know writers from other genres who also couldn't get into the story before that point. At 50%I was REALLY hooked and glad the book was required, because I wouldn't have made it that far any other way. (Shows the importance of opening pages). I stayed up all night reading it--loving it. Until the end. Bam! Which really was no ending at all. Instead, it set up the next book. I was annoyed but I started reading the next book. After all, how else was I going to know what happened to this angel/devil love story? The next book started of awesome. I mean it picked up exactly where the first one left off and there was all sorts of angst and I'm loving it until this chick did something so stupid it didn't even make sense. She offers a flimsy explanation for it, but it doesn't hold up against any kind of logic. Still I keep reading. So we get to the end of the second book, and there is more of an ending this time. And it's still pretty good and the promises of romance are HUGE. HUGE! So of course, I buy the third book which is where things start to fall apart. All of these promises of angel/devil romance and the book opens with Eliza. Who is Eliza? Well, your guess is as good as mine cuz she hasn't been in the book before now. And at first I'm thinking Eliza just some passerby seeing the apocalypse and this is just to give us some perspective on what this all looks like from Earth. Nah. Eliza is actually going to become a central character. In the last book of a trilogy where her name has never been mentioned before. And Eliza has issues and brings them to the page. Because I made it through two books of fights to death without ever really having to say "Oh gross!" but when I got to the part about her fingernails being ground to powder for communion bread... Well... OMG Gross! All I wanted from this third book was spooning and kissing. It's a forbidden romance, remember? Instead, I've got some chick making communion bread from her fingernails. Wow! Just wow! As I'm writing this, I'm only 65% into the third book, so I may update it later. I do believe the third book will tie up loose ends, I just wish it could have done with the characters we started with, and maybe more kissing.